Combat Oregon Drunk Driving With Free Tri-Met New Year’s Eve

With the New Year’s holiday fast approaching this is a good time to remind everyone of the importance of avoiding Oregon drunk driving. As I have written about in previous years, New Year’s Eve is often a time when people over-indulge, including people who would never think of drinking and driving at other times of the year. The good news is that here in Portland Tri-Met is doing its part to help cut down on holiday drunk driving.

According to a news release from Tri-Met “all service is free after 8 p.m. on New Year’s Eve.” Buses will be on their regular weekday schedules as will Blue, Green and Yellow MAX trains. Late night service will continue at 30 minute intervals until shortly after 3 a.m. MAX Red Line trains will be on a normal schedule, with shuttle buses to the airport picking up after train service stops for the night. The Portland Streetcar will also operate a normal weekday schedule.

As a recent article in The Oregonian noted, an analysis by the newspaper found that on New Year’s Eve 2011 and New Year’s Day 2012 “there were 82 fatal accidents involving at least one drunken driver, one of them in Oregon… More than half of the deaths on New Year’s Days from 2008 to 2012 involved at least one drunken driver, more than any other holiday, an analysis by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found.”

As a Portland drunk driving victims’ lawyer I’m making this blog post to remind everyone of the importance of staying safe this New Year’s Eve, and throughout the long holiday weekend. The fact that New Year’s related drunk driving deaths never seem to go away completely does not mean that all of us should not do everything we can to keep the numbers down – both for our own sakes and for those of our families and friends.